A few weeks ago, we were looking for a new show to watch. We heard a lot of recommendations for Yellowstone.

We watched it, binged it really. All 4 seasons.

The show was fine. Just fine. I can’t say that it was excellent, or terrible. The show fell somewhere in the middle for me.

Yellowstone felt like a cross between Succession and Sons of Anarchy. We’ve only seen one season of Succession, but are planning on continuing with it. But we did watch 6 (SIX!) seasons of Sons of Anarchy before giving up (I did not like this show). Yellowstone felt like some weird crossover of these two shows.

For me, the main saving grace of this show is Kevin Costner and Jefferson White (as Jimmy). Most of the characters I either don’t like or am indifferent on. But I do like both Kevin Costner and Jefferson White’s characters.

Yellowstone is returning for a 5th season. We’ll watch it, but it’s not one of my favorite shows.

One hazard to owning Golden Retrievers (we own two). When you brush them (we do weekly), it looks like they’ve lost a small dog.

Finished reading Persepolis Rising (The Expanse Book 7) today. It took me a little while to get into this series. But now I’m all in. Such a great series. 📚

Finished watching Boba Fett (season one?) last night. It was a good show. Unfortunately, I preferred when The Mandolorian was on screen compared to Boba Fett. I think I’m just more invested in The Mandolorian compared to Boba Fett (something I never thought I would say). 📺

On our recent trip to Florida, we went to a few theme parks. We had planned on Universal Studios and Walt Disney World.

I’m still not sure how we ended up at Gatorland one afternoon, but we did. I think my daughter saw a billboard for it one day while driving from the soccer field back to our hotel.

We went with a few other families from the soccer team.

Gatorland is a alligator themed park. They have more than just alligators, but gators are the main attraction. We also say crocodiles, tortoises, birds and a few big cats.

The kids did the ropes course that they had there. While they did that, we explored more of the park.

We also had a chance to feed some gators. For the larger gators, they have dried food pellets (picture dry dog food for alligators). For the smaller gators (2-5 years), you can buy fish to put on a fishing line and feed them. We did both. The kids had a lot of fun feeding the fish the the younger gators.

Gatorland was some place I never thought I would end up. It turned out to be a good time. I’m not sure I need to go back, but I’m glad I went.

Renewed my library card today. I feel oddly accomplished. 📚

It’s National Pizza Day. My company (Slice) came up with this great retrospective on the last year in pizza. 🍕

The 2022 Slice of the Union.

I spent about an hour last night just wandering around in Pokémon Legends: Arceus collecting items and Pokémon. It’s been fun just wandering around and exploring. 🎮

Reading Apple in 2021: The Six Colors report card. The Developer relations grade feels accurate. Apple has not been doing great on this front recently. It’s really a shame.

I’m a long time Charles Proxy user. I’ve just started using Proxyman.io and I’m a fan.

I haven’t dived too deep into it yet, but I really like what I see so far. But it does the basics really well. I need to use it a bit more before I make a final decision.

Gross. www.macrumors.com/2022/02/0…

We recently took a trip to Florida. It was a mix of “business” and pleasure.

This was a first time flying anywhere during the pandemic. It was interesting how things have changed in the last two years.

The first part of the trip was mostly “business”. We were in Florida for a national soccer showcase event. Our youngest plays travel soccer and we were there for a soccer showcase.

Travel (youth) soccer is like a job.

A showcase is like a tournament, but not. You play three games over three days and college coaches can come and watch the games and players. There are no tournament winners though.

This year, we didn’t get a lot of college coaches. But if my son plays soccer, at this level, again next year, his team will have a lot of college coaches watching games.

The first few days of the trip were mostly soccer. Once that was over, we had 4 or 5 days for pleasure. During this time, we spent time at Universal Studios, Gatorland and Walt Disney World. I am hoping to write more about these parks in future blog posts. But for now, I’ll say that we had a lot of fun.

The weather in Florida was chilly and rainy from time to time. But the weather was much nicer than it was back here in Pennsylvania. We had two perfect days (75ºF+ and sunny) there. On our coldest day there, it was in the 40s. 40º is much better than the low at home of 9º one morning.

Close to the end of our vacation, there was a storm (Winter Storm Kenan) that was going to be hitting home. We heard snow totals of anywhere from 3" - 18" and lots of wind. We watched the storm throughout the week. The storm was supposed to be at it’s peak right around the time we would be landing at home. We ended up changing our flight home to later in the day and reserving a rental car as an extreme backup.

The storm stayed more off the coast. We could have flown home at our normal time without much of any issue. When we did get home, we had about 3-4" of snow on the ground.

We had a great time in Florida. I kinda wish that we could have stayed longer. Stupid work and school.

I hope I get a chance to write about the parks we visited soon. If/when I do, I’ll update this post with links to the new posts.

Related posts:

• Gatorland
• Universal Studios (Flordia)
• Walt Disney World

Just when I think I’m in decent shape, burpees humble me. They are the worst. So many burpees today. 🤢

I’ve been playing Pokémon Legends: Arceus.

I just don’t know how I feel about it. I’m about 4.5 hrs in and enjoy some parts and not others. It’s not a typical Pokémon game, but I’m still not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

I’m going to stick with it a bit longer. I hope it really grabs me.

Today’s lunchtime torture device.

As much as I enjoy The Book of Boba Fett, I prefer The Mandalorian.

Over the Christmas break I rewatched the original The Matrix trilogy. I haven’t seen these movies in a few years. I watched them in preparation to watch The Matrix Resurrections on HBO Max earlier this week.

I think the first Matrix movie was revolutionary. At least in my eyes. I think it came out as the right time in my life. It was such a good movie. For a long time after watching it, I would think about the movie a lot. Even rewatching the original, I am reminded of how much I liked it.

For a little while after the original movie, I wished they would make a sequel. And then they did. The two sequels they made were not good.

The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions weren’t like the Star Wars prequels. The Star Wars sequels weren’t great, but had their place. The Matrix sequels were just bad and I managed to block them from my memory. When I rewatched them last month, I had completely forgotten what happened.

Whenever I think of The Matrix sequels, I think of this XKCD Comic (Matrix Revisited). The comic came out 10 years after the release of the original (and after the sequels), but still wished for sequels.

I watched The Matrix Resurrections over a few days earlier this week (it takes me a while to watch movies). I really enjoyed it. It was enough nostalgia without relying too much on the original movie. I don’t think it was as good as the first one, but way better then the second two movies.

If you’ve watched the original trilogy and gave up on them, try The Matrix Resurrections. It’s good. This is another movie I want to watch again.

I recently finished watching Will Smith’s “The Best Shape of My Life” 6-part docuseries on YouTube.

It was really good.

I went into the show thinking that it would all be about how Will Smith went from a COVID body back to the usual shape we’re used to seeing him in in his films.

It wasn’t.

The docuseries wasn’t just about Will trying to lose weight and get back into shape. It was also about him writing his memoir and diving into his past.

I learned a lot about Will Smith. I’ve only really known about him from movies, music and TV shows. I have a lot of respect for him putting all of this (this meaning the weight gain/loss, history, personal stuff) out there for anyone to see. I don’t think I could do that.

I really enjoyed this series.